


error: message failed to send

by perennials



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Freeform, Gen, actually whom i kiddin everyone makes a brief unnamed appearance, joui cameo, otose cameo, yorozuya cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:13:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6187048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're a broken record.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> not particularly AO3-worthy, but figured i'd drop it here anyway.  
> it'd be best to approach this with no expectations. what is plot? what is characterization? only google has the true answers. all i've got is this mishmash mess of not-even-900-words. sorry about the bad choice of metaphor/symbol/motif.  
> oh, yeah. it's kind of midnight and i've got school today and 'm generally really tired, so if i missed anything/made any glaring errors please do point them out. thank ya

Telephone.  
  
Someone laughs. It sounds like choir bells skimming the ocean's surface.  
  
Telephone.  
  
You gaze down at your own murky reflection. Did someone tinker with your drink? A thin layer of gossamer-thin oil floats on its surface like a sheen of  
  
(Telephone)  
  
—sweat. Sweaty forehead, sweaty palms, pooling in the spaces between your ribs and fingertips like stagnant water. Mosquito breeding. Mosquitoes are bad. Dangerous. Harmful. Bad, bad, bad. You are bad.  
  
Dangerous. harmful. Killer— killer stare, hungry bear, wild-eyed glare—  
  
Telephone.  
  
Someone call the cops before the glass mirage shatters. The demon is no longer a man (read: the man is no longer a demon), but he will burn this building down like it is a straw house on pipe cleaner stilts if no one picks up.

Telephone, telephone, telephone  
  
game, the little demon with strawberry milk in his veins stands on tippy-toes to reach the table-top. He dials the string of numbers wound around his pinky finger, stands in the doorway until his heartbeats slow to the empty hammering of the ring tone. No one picks up. He waits for three years.

Telephone, telephone, phone, alone, telephone on your own.  
  
You're not worthy of redemption.

Telephone, telephone, can't call home, can't _find_ home, your memory is alight like a birthday candle gone out of control and the candied _Gintoki_ branded on like a curse (blessing) is melting like candle wax, dripping down the sides of your crooked vanilla cake like blood— no, Shouyou would rather call it caret-red or brilliant vermilion, watered down animosity blossoming on your sleeves like carnations. Demons are brats. Murders are mistakes. Shouyou looked at the paper-thin wash of ugly rust-red in your eyes and saw the sunshine, diluted bronze underneath.

Telephone.

"Shouyou," you call out to the retreating figure in the distance, voice high-pitched and whinny and breaking a little at the end. Shouyou, can you hear me, Shouyou come back, Shouyou don't fucking _do_ this to me I'm just a _child_ just a _kid_ you were going to teach me how to _live_ but now you're going on ahead.

This time his back is not the comforting sight it usually is. This time you are not trailing along quietly in his wake like a second shadow. This time he is leaving. Is he deaf, has the phone cord been cut, can your signals no longer reach? Are you on different wavelengths now? There is an invisible wall you cannot breach.

Tele-tele-telephone-ne-e.

Someone must've cut your telephone cord, too. With a sword, of course, because who the hell has a pair of functioning scissors in this time and age? Not you. Not _them_. They have eyes of steel and deep-set lines and their ears ring with the bone-chilling sound of swords clashing,

muffled choking and the uneven pitter-patter of _caret-red_ raindrops. No one can afford to breathe here, not when every other person is choking on their own blood.

The telephone rings. No one picks up.

No one ever picks up.

 

—

 

Sometimes you still wake up in a cold sweat. Clutch the sheets until your knuckles are white. Dig your nails into your palms until they leave brilliant vermilion streaks on your skin like the shaky crayon-lines of a toddler.

Telephone—

Sometimes someone picks up, now. Sometimes you wake up to idiot one sprawled across the upper half of your body, snoring like a banshee, and idiot two knocked out by the door with his headphones still on. Sometimes the ringing stops because someone with a maximum volume _above_ maximum volume ("goddamnit, Takasugi, shut _up_!") is yelling into your ear. Sometimes the insistent lecturing of a pissed-off old hag filters through on the broken lines.

Telephone.

Someone laughs. It sounds like a confident, loud-mouthed fool with ugly brown curls and disgustingly old-fashioned sunglasses that's had a glass (or three, or maybe seven) too many to drink. It sounds like shit. The old hag tells you for the thousandth time to throw that bastard out, but his arm is clamped rather stubbornly around your shoulder, and to be entirely honest you're not in the best frame of mind right now to be making important decisions, anyway. A kid with flaming orange hair dunks a glass of ice-cold water on your head, and now you're hot _and_ cold, and wet to the bone. You tell her to bugger off, because somewhere in the muddled haze of your mind there is the half-thought that maybe you shouldn't use such strong language around kids, and when she punches you half-heartedly in the arm it feels like you've been pummeled by a train. A second later a clumsy-footed terrorist and an angry, short man join the fray, dragging a pair of glasses along by the... corner of its frames. Predictably enough, chaos erupts soon after.

Amidst the screaming and shouting and madman flailing of one a.m. in the morning and a horde of uninvited guests drunk off their asses, dancing to Pon Pon Pon, you laugh. No one laughs with you. They all think you're crazy. You laugh again, for the heck of it. The sound resounds pleasantly in your skull like ocean waves lapping at sandy beaches.

Telephone.

Your signal's finally reached.  


**Author's Note:**

> hey, thanks for readin. kudos and comments are cool. are ya tired of seeing the word telephone yet? tell me about it.  
> have a good one.


End file.
